Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are quasi-government agencies in that they are publicly-owned, but overseen by the government. The purpose of Fannie and Freddie is to make sure that money is available to homeowners that want home loans. Neither lends to consumers directly, though; you'll have to talk
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03/23/2008
There is a big difference between credit optimization and credit repair. Credit optimization focuses in on the fact that nearly 4 out of 5 credit reports include errors. 65% of a credit score is made up of items other than payment history (ex. revolving balance due vs. balance maximum allowed,
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03/23/2008
Basically, you have three main business models in the mortgage profession: Bank related mortgages, correspondent lenders, and mortgage brokers. Their business models are as follows:Bank related mortgage- Bank funds loans from bank funds and has loans securitized in a pool of mortgage backed secu
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03/23/2008
Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is an insurance policy paid to a lender in the event that a homeowner defaults on his home loan. These defaults are up 35 percent over last year, according to an industry group -- bad news for all homeowners requiring PMI with their mortgage. Much like home insure
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03/22/2008
When buying a home, there are two stages in the home loan approval process. Stage 1 starts when a homebuyer submits a mortgage application to his loan officer for a pre-approval. A pre-approval is a "walk-through" mortgage approval that says -- at a given purchase price and downpayment amount --
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03/22/2008
There is no such thing as a "national real estate market". Real estate is local. We know this is true because even cities don't have their own real estate market. This chart shows how home prices have diverged across adjacent zip codes over the last 12 months. Some influencing factors: School sy
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03/22/2008
Mortgage lending guidelines have changed very quickly and often without notice. Some of the more well-known changes include: Broad restrictions on stated income home loans Broad restrictions on 100 percent financing "Risk-based fees" for credit scores under 740 Some of the lesser-known restrictio
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03/22/2008
For a lot of homebuyers, calculating a prospective mortgage payment is an online experience. For example, a search on Google for "mortgage calculator" returns 39 million options.Some people, however, prefer to plan on their local hard drive using spreadsheets. For these people, the hardest part
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03/08/2008
Recently, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight released its fourth-quarter housing data. The OFHEO report color-coded each state according to its annual price changes. The states shown in red lost value, and everyone else gained. Overall, the OFHEO measured a 0.8% national incre
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03/08/2008
Oil closed at an all-time high this week. Rising energy costs can lead to inflation because American Business eventually passes on its higher costs to American Consumers. When consumers have to spend more money for the same amount of product, it's called "inflation". Another way to look at infl
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03/08/2008